subs. phr. (journalists’).—A writer of paragraphs at the rate of a penny a line, or some such small sum; a literary hack. Fr. un écrivain de ferblanc. Hence, PENNY-A-LINERISM.
1840. THACKERAY, The Paris Sketch Book, 232. As inflated as a newspaper document, by an unlimited PENNY-A-LINER.
1845. Punch; viii. 190. If the paper were limited in its knowledge to facts, what on earth would become of the PENNY-A-LINERS.
1853. Diogenes, ii. 21. An idea worth, we should say, a very great deal more than a PENNY A LINE.
1857. REV. E. BRADLEY (‘Cuthbert Bede’), The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, an Oxford Freshman, II. viii. Young ladies, moreover, who, as PENNY-A-LINERS say, are possessed of considerable personal attractions.
1865. The Atlantic Monthly, June, 711. There must be an end to all temporal things, and why not to books? The same endless night awaits a Plato and a PENNY-A-LINER.
1872. T. L. KINGTON-OLIPHANT, The Sources of Standard English, 244. The PENNY-A-LINERS now write about ‘a splendid shout.’
